GREAT FRIENDS IN THE SPIRIT

It amazes me that one saint leads me to another. In reading about Mother Mectilde de Bar, I came

across Bl. Columba Marmion and his name leads me to another.  Here is a great friend of the Blessed.

DESIRE-FELICIEN-FRANCOIS-JOSEPH MERCIER born in 1851  was a Belgian cardinal and a noted  Thomist scholar. His scholarship gained him recognition from the Pope and he was appointed as Archbishop of Mechelen, serving from 1906 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1907.

Mercier is noted for his staunch resistance to the German occupation of 1914–1918 during the Great War.

Desiré Mercier was born at the château du Castegier in Braine-l'Alleud, as the fifth of the seven children of Paul-Léon Mercier and his wife Anne-Marie Barbe Croquet. He entered the minor seminary at Mechelen in 1861 to prepare for the church.  He was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Giacomo Cattani, the nuncio to Belgium, on 4 April 1874. Father Mercier  continued with graduate studies, obtaining his licentiate in theology in 1877 and a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Louvain.

Three of Father Mercier's sisters became nuns.

One of his maternal uncles was the Reverend Fr. Adrien Croquet a missionary to the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation in western Oregon near the Pacific coast, where his surname was anglicized to Crockett. In the 1870s, a Mercier cousin, Joseph Mercier, joined their uncle Fr. Croquet in Oregon. He married a woman of one of the Native American tribes resident there. Today, several thousand descendants of Joseph and his wife are members of the tribe.

In 1877 Father Mercier began teaching philosophy at Mechelen's minor seminary as well as becaming the spiritual director. His comprehensive knowledge of St Thomas Aquinas earned him the newly erected chair of Thomism at Louvain's Catholic university in 1882, a post he held till 1905. It was here that he forged a lifelong friendship with Dom Columba Marmion (See previous BLOG). Raised to the rank of Monsignor on 6 May 1887, Father Mercier founded the Higher Institute of Philosophy at the Louvain University in 1899, which was to be a beacon of Neo-Thomist philosophy.

His reputation within his field gained the recognition of Pope Pius X, and he was appointed as Archbishop of Mechelen and Primate of Belgium on 7 February 1906. He received his episcopal consecration on the following 25 March taking as his episcopal motto: Apostle of Jesus Christ.

With the overrunning of Belgium and the exile of both the King and his government Cardinal Mercier acted as the rallying point for Belgian resistance to German occupation.  He was also one of the cardinal electors in the 1922 papal conclave, which selected Pope Pius XI. By the time he returned from the election of the new Pope, Benedict XV, the majority of the country was in German hands.

Publishing open letters (which were subsequently picked up by Allied and neutral newspapers) the Cardinal criticized the German occupation force.  Ordinarily he could have been expected to be arrested and perhaps even shot for his subversive views - regardless of his position as a cardinal,  but his unusually high profile, and popularity among German Catholics, ensured his continuing liberty, aside from a brief period of arrest in January 1915.

Cardinal Mercier exerted continuous (and ultimately successful) pressure upon the Germans to cease deporting Belgian laborers to factories in Germany, and campaigned against Germany's incitement of Belgium's Flemish population.

Cardinal Mercier suffered from persistent dyspepsia and in early January 1926 he underwent surgery for a lesion of the stomach. During surgery, the anaesthetized Cardinal held a conversation with his surgeon.

In his final days, he was visited by King Albert and Queen Elizabeth, Lord Halifax, and family members. He entered a deep coma around 2:00 p.m. on 23 January and died an hour later, at age 74. The Cardinal was buried at St. Rumbolds Cathedral.

The Cardinal had a  great devotion of the Sacred Heart.

“I am going to reveal to you the secret of sanctity and happiness. Every day for five minutes control your imagination and close your eyes to all the noises of the world in order to enter into yourself. Then, in the sanctuary of your baptized soul (which is the temple of the Holy Spirit) speak to that Divine Spirit, saying to Him: 

O Holy Spirit, beloved of my soul, I adore You. Enlighten me, guide me, strengthen me, console me. Tell me what I should do; give me Your orders. I promise to submit myself to all that You desire of me and to accept all that You permit to happen to me. Let me only know Your Will.

If you do this, your life will flow along happily, serenely, and full of consolation, even in the midst of trials. Grace will be proportioned to the trial, giving you the strength to carry it and you will arrive at the Gate of Paradise, laden with merit. This submission to the Holy Spirit is the secret of sanctity”.

BENEDICTION BLESSED & GREAT WRITER

When I entered monastic life, we were allowed to bring 3 books with us: The Bible,

The Exercises of St. Gertrude and Christ the Life of the Monk by Dom Columba Marmion.

BLESSED COLUMBA MARMION, OSB was born Joseph Aloysius Marmion in 1858 in Dublin,Ireland. He was to become the third Abbot of  Maredsous Abbey in  Belgium.  He was beatified by Pope St. John Paul II on September 3, 2000. While little known in this country, except to Benedictines, he was one of the most popular and influential Catholic authors of the 20th Century. Today his books are considered spiritual classics.

 He came from a large and very religious family; three of his sisters became nuns. His father, William Marmion was from Kildare. His mother, Herminie Cordier was French, prompting his biographer, Dom Raymond Thibaut to remark: "He owes to his Celtic origin his penetrating intelligence, his lively imagination, his sensibility, his exuberance and his youthful spirit. The French blood which ran in his veins contributes to his clearness of mind, his habit of clear perception, his ease of exposition, and his uprightness of character. From the combination of the two he derives his constant gaiety and his generosity of heart with all the strength, devotion, and fine feeling which this noble quality implies."

From a very early age he was seemingly "consumed with some kind of inner fire or enthusiasm for the things of God." He was educated at the Jesuit Belvedere College in Dublin. He entered the seminary at the age of 16.

A "very important moment in Dom Marmion's inner life" occurred while he was still in seminary. It seems that one day when returning to the study hall he had all at once, to use his own words, "a light on God's Infinity." While this "light" only lasted for an instant, it was so clear and strong that it left an indelible impression on him, so that... "he referred to this not without emotion and thanksgiving during the last days of his life."

On his journey back to Ireland, he passed through Maredsous, Belgium, a young and dynamic monastery founded 9 years before (1872) by Benedictine monks from the  great Abbey of Beuron, Germany. He wished to join the community there, but his archbishop in Ireland refused his request to do so and appointed him as curate at Dundrum, a parish in the south of Dublin.

After a year, he was appointed Professor of Metaphysics at Holy Cross College at Clonliffe, his old seminary. For the next four years (1882-86) he embarked on the education and spiritual direction of others, including his appointment as chaplain to a nearby convent.

At the age of 27, he received permission from his bishop to join the Benedictines at Maredsous . At first, it was very hard for him, even "traumatic.", as he was a respected priest and professor, and now in the monastery he was starting over as a novice, as well as learning a new language (French).

After his Solemn Profession in 1891, he was appointed to act as assistant to the Novice Master, with whom he got on rather badly plus he had to preach at parishes in the vicinity of the Abbey.

"There was an element of the dramatic in his initiation into pastoral work. A neighboring parish priest, whose preacher had unexpectedly failed him on the eve of a great feast, came to the Benedictines to ask their help in his difficulty. The superior was very sorry, but he had no one to offer him except a young Irish monk whose French was far from perfect. 'I will take him all the same,' said the parish priest, and he brought off Dom Columba. Three days later he brought him back to the Abbey saying: 'We have never had such a preacher before in my parish.' And soon the other parish priests were competing with each other for 'the Irish father.

Above all, his spiritual life became more and more centered on Christ.

“One morning after breakfast, while walking in the garden, I read the eighth chapter of The Imitation of Christ and I felt strongly impelled to take Jesus as my one friend. I realized that, in spite of my great weakness and unfaithfulness, Jesus desired to be my friend above all others. The text: "My delights are to be with the children of men" [Proverbs 8:31], gripped me and compelled me irresistibly to respond with all my heart to this desire of Jesus. In the course of this meditation I felt the near presence of Jesus and a great desire to do all things before His eyes”.

In 1899, Dom Columba helped to found the Abbey of Mont César, Louvain, Belgium, and became its first Prior. Not only did he have the care of this new foundation, but he also gave retreats in Belgium and the United Kingdom. He also became confessor to the future Cardinal Mercier.(Future BLOG)

With Card. Mercier (Rt.)

In 1893, Dom Hildebrand de Hemptinne, Second Abbot of Maredsous, was appointed by Pope Leo XIII as the first Abbot Primate of the Benedictine Order. At the request of the Pope, Dom Hildebrand continued as Abbot of Maredsous, but relinquished that office in 1909. In that year, at the age of 51, "at the height of his powers, both physical and intellectual," Dom Marmion was elected Third Abbot of Maredsous. A community consisting of a hundred monks, it ran two schools. Abbot Marmion adopted as his motto "To serve rather than be served," a maxim taken from the Rule of St. Benedict.

The monastery had great spiritual and intellectual influence under his leadership, and vocations abounded. But Dom Marmion was not indifferent to temporal matters. Thus he had the Abbey equipped with electricity and central heating, facilities rarely to be found in monasteries at that time.

When war broke out in 1914 Dom Marmion, fearing that his young novices might be called up, sent them to Ireland. This involved his traveling, disguised as a cattle dealer, through the war zone from Belgium to England, "without passport or papers of any kind. 

Disguished as a Sheep Farmer

His first book was Christ, the Life of the Soul (1917) which was first published privately, but then rapidly, unexpectedly, became an "overwhelming success" in the Catholic world.

There was essentially "nothing new" in Dom Marmion's work. Rather, his "revolution" was effected by a return to what was fundamental, specifically his restoration of "Christ as the center of all.

A second major theme of his work is the doctrine of divine adoption in Christ, as set forth in St. Paul’s writings. But although the doctrine had been addressed by many spiritual writers before him, it would be difficult to find another who had given the mystery such preeminence, making it, as he does, the beginning and the end of the spiritual life. And with Dom Marmion it is not so much a theory or a system, as a living truth that acts directly on the soul. Some believe the Catholic Church will one day formally declare Dom Marmion a Doctor of the Church.

Sources for his  thought include, preeminently, the Bible (especially St. Paul and St. John), the Church Fathers, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Liturgy and St. Francis de Sales.  As a 20th-century writer, Dom Marmion is notable, perhaps unique, in the several formal and informal endorsements his works have received from the popes of the 20th century, including Benedict XV.

Br. Claude- Mt. Angel Abbey

 With Cardinal Mercier, his friend and confidant, Dom Marmion was a spiritually dominant figure on the Belgian and international scene. The publication of his books had met with "immediate and overwhelming success. His influence was at its height, despite his fatigue and a precarious state of health.

Dom Marmion was struck during a flu epidemic, and succumbed to bronchial pneumonia on January 30, 1923.

Rapidly, favors and miracles were attributed to him; justifying the transfer, in 1963, of his body from the monks' cemetery to the abbatial church (his body was found to be incorrupt, after more than 40 years). A cure from cancer obtained after a woman from St. Cloud, Minnesota, visited his tomb in 1966 was investigated by the Church and recognized as miraculous in 2000, leading to his beatification in that year by Pope John Paul II.

“He bequeathed to us an authentic treasury of spiritual teaching for the Church of our time. In his writings he teaches a way of holiness, simple and yet demanding, for all the faithful, whom God, through love, has destined to be his adopted children in Christ Jesus... May a wide rediscovery of the spiritual writings of Blessed Columba Marmion help priests, religious and laity to grow in union with Christ and bear faithful witness to Him through ardent love of God and generous service to their brothers and sisters.

May Blessed Columba Marmion help us to live ever more intensely, to understand ever more deeply, our membership in the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ!”

 

THE GOOD SHEPHERD AND VOCATIONS

Dr. He Qi

Being shepherds to our Cotswold sheep, this Sunday is  a favorite one. We did not breed our sheep this past year- for the first time in almost 40 years, but were given 3 lambs in Holy Week to raise up for meat.  All of our sheep are young, and we hope this year to breed some of the ewes.

We are more fortunate than the other islands that surround us, as we have no predators or dogs that roam, killing and maiming the flocks.  Our sheep, as all our animals, are free to roam our many acres, freeing us from keeping a vigilant eye on them. We depend on the Good Shepherd Himself to keep a watch over us and all we hold dear.

Everyone who is entrusted with the care of others is a shepherd.  We are good shepherds when we love those entrusted to us, praying for them, spending our time and talents for their welfare, and guarding them from physical and spiritual dangers.  

Today we also celebrate Vocations Sunday, a day of remembrance and prayer for all those who have received God’s call in life and chose to follow Him and dedicate themselves completely to Him. It is the duty of all Catholics to pray for an increase in vocations to the priesthood and religious life. 

For young people, that they may know the personal love of the Lord for them, and respond with open and generous hearts. We pray to the Lord. . .

BEAUTIFUL SHEPHERD

To become a good shepherd is to come out of the shell of selfishness
in order to be attentive to those for whom we are responsible
so as to reveal to them their fundamental beauty and value
and help them to grow and become fully alive.

Here we touch the fundamental difference
between productivity and fecundity,
between making an inanimate object, such as a car or a piece of furniture,
and transmitting life.
We can discard it or do with it what we like.
This is not so with people;
if we are bonded to a weak person
or to someone whom God has given to us in friendship,
in responsibility;
in accompaniment or in community;
we cannot discard them or do what we like with them.
and we carry some responsibility for them.

It is not easy to be a good shepherd, to really listen,
to accept another’s reality and conflicts.
It is not easy to touch our own fears and blocks in relation to people,
or to love people to life,
It is a challenge to help another
gradually to accept responsibility for their own life,
to trust themselves, to become less and less dependent on us
and more dependent on Jesus, the Good or the Wonderful Shepherd.

                                    Jean Vanier on the Good Shepherd, 

THE EUCHARIST AS A SCHOOL

BL CANDIDA of the EUCHARIST  was born Maria Barba on 16 January 1884 in Catanzaro as the tenth of twelve children (five who died in their childhoods) to the appellate court judge Pietro Barba and Giovanna Flora. Her parents and siblings all hailed from Palermo but moved to Catanzaro while Pietro was in that town during a brief assignment. In 1886 her parents returned to Palermo.

At the age of fifteen, Maria underwent an interior conversion that turned her heart and mind totally to God. Sadly, her desire to enter religious life was opposed by her family. During this time, Maria found consolation in developing a profound love for the Eucharist and in reading the autobiography of St Thérese of Lisieux.

After her parents both died, Maria was finally able to become a religious, at the age of thirty-six. She entered the Discalced Carmelite Order, having already assimilated their spirituality. Taking the religious name Maria Candida of the Eucharist, she soon became her convent's prioress.

Ever zealous for the faithful observance of the Carmelite rule, she once admonished a nun for her laxity, asking her, "My daughter, why do you insult the Lord like this? Don't you realize that mankind needs you?" In the 1930s, Mother Candida wrote a book on the Eucharist steeped in her own devotion to the Blessed Sacrament.

On the Feast of Corpus Christi during the Holy Year of 1933, Bl. Candida began to write what was to become her little masterpiece, entitled "The Eucharist, true jewel of eucharistic spirituality”. It is a long and profound meditation on the Eucharist, which had as its goal a record of her own personal experiences and her deepening theological reflections on those same experiences. 

She saw all the dimensions of Christian life summed up in the Eucharist. Firstly, Faith: “O my Beloved Sacrament, I see you, I believe in you!... O Holy Faith. Contemplate with ever greater faith our Dear Lord in the Sacrament: live with Him who comes to us every day”. Secondly, Hope: “O My Divine Eucharist, my dear Hope, all our hope is in You... Ever since I was a baby my hope in the Holy Eucharist has been strong”. Thirdly, Charity: “My Jesus, how I love You! There is within my heart an enormous love for You, O Sacramental Love...How great is the love of God made bread for our souls, who become a prisoner for me!”

The model of a eucharistic life is, of course, the Virgin Mary, who carried the Son of God in her womb and who continues to give birth to him in the souls of his disciples. “I want to be like Mary,” she wrote in one of the most intense and profound pages of The Eucharist, “to be Mary for Jesus, to take the place of His Mother. When I receive Jesus in Communion Mary is always present. I want to receive Jesus from her hands, she must make me one with Him. I cannot separate Mary from Jesus. Hail, O Body born of Mary. Hail Mary, dawn of the Eucharist!”

For Mother Maria Candida the Eucharist is a school, it is food and an encounter with God, a coming together of hearts, a school of virtue and wisdom. “Heaven itself does not contain more. God, that unique treasure is here! Really, yes really: my God is my everything”. “I ask my Jesus to be a guardian of all the tabernacles of the world, until the end of time”.

Bl. Candida died on the evening of 12 the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity, June 1949 due to  liver cancer and her remains were interred at Ragusa. She  had struggled with this cancer and its great pain since the previous February though was first diagnosed with a tumor in her liver back in 1947.

 Pope  (St.) John Paul II beatified her in Saint Peter's Square on 21 March 2004.




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BURNING LOVE of the EUCHARIST

ST. MARIA CRISTINA of the IMMACULATE CONCEPTION BRANDO was born Adelaide Brando in Naples in 1856 to Giovanni Giuseppe Brando and Maria Concetta Marrazzo. Her mother died after her birth and she was home schooled. As a young girl, she felt a call to the  religious life. She attended Mass daily and, at the age of twelve, she took a personal vow of chastity, soon trying to enter a Neapolitan monastery. Her father refused her to enter and stopped her from doing so, but he relented and allowed her to enter the Poor Clare monastery at Fiorentine.

Adelaide fell ill twice and returned home to Naples. When she had fully recovered from her ailments, she joined the Sacramentine nuns, as had been her wish. She took the name Maria Cristina of the Immaculate Conception, making her vows in 1876.

 She suffered from a chronic bronchitis so acute that it forced her each night to sleep upright in a chair, a disability that continued for the rest of her life. Sister Maria Cristina left that order due to her on-going illness

In her early twenties, she began to discern the need to found a new congregation for herself and several other like-minded young women, including her own sister Concetta, who had also been compelled to return home from the Poor Clares' convent. The "Sisters-Expiatory Victims of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament" founded n 1878, devoted themselves to perpetual Eucharistic adoration  and the schooling and spiritual formation of young girls.

Her health declined at the beginning of the new century though ushering in a prosperous time for her religious institute, which grew at a rapid pace. It also received assistance from the future Venerable Michelangelo Longo of Marigliano and future saint Ludovico of Casoria, O.F.M. She served as the Superior General of her order, being noted for deep piousness and her devotion to the passion of Jesus Christ and the Eucharist. She would sleep close to the exposed Host as a means of drawing strength and remaining close to the Lord.

She died in 1906. She would be remembered for the burning love of God and neighbor that characterized her life. She was canonized May 17, 2015 by Pope Francis.

Her spirituality of expiation was so strong, that it became the charism of the Institute. In fact, among the remaining fragments of her autobiography, written in obedience to her spiritual director, we read: “the principal purpose of this work is reparation for the offenses that are received by the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, especially so many acts of irreverence and carelessness, sacrilegious communions, and sacraments poorly celebrated, Holy Masses assisted at inattentively and, that which bitterly pierces that Sacred Heart, that so many of his ministers and so many souls that are consecrated to him, align themselves with these ignorant people and thus pierce his heart even more.”

MOTHER WHO LOVED THE EUCHARIST

In the next few BLOGS I will present some women who had a great devotion to the Eucharist and spent their lives promoting adoration and reparation.

VENERABLE CONCEPCION  (“CONCHITA”) CABRERA de ARMIDA was born on December 8, 1862 in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. She was a mystic and writer, whose writings were widely distributed and inspired the establishment of the five apostolates of the 'Works of the Cross' in Mexico. ( 'Apostolate of the Cross' founded in 1895, 'Congregation of Sisters of the Cross of the Sacred Heart of Jesus' founded in 1897, 'Covenant of Love with the Heart of Jesus' founded in 1909, 'The Priestly Fraternity' founded in 1912, and 'The Congregation of Missionaries of the Holy Spirit' founded in 1914). These apostolates continue to this day.

She was born to Octaviano Cabrera Lacaveux and Clara Arias Rivera who had a respectable, but not lavish family life. She had a simple, happy and playful childhood. Although she recalled to have often disobeyed her parents as a child, she showed a special love for the Holy Eucharist from an early age.

In 1884 she married Francisco Armida and had nine children between 1885 and 1899. In 1901, when she was 39 years old, her husband died and she had to care for her children, the youngest of whom was two years old. Her life as a widow was not made any easier by the fact that the Mexican Revolution raged from 1910 to 1921 and took the lives of 900,000 of Mexico's population of 15 million. Yet her writings reflect an amazing tranquility, amid the chaos that surrounded her.

Conchita with her Family

 As a mystic, she reported that she heard God telling her: "Ask me for a long suffering life and to write a lot... That's your mission on earth". She never claimed direct visions of Jesus and Mary but spoke of Jesus through her prayers and meditations.

Her spiritual life started before the death of her husband. In 1894 she took "spiritual nuptials" and in 1896 wrote in her diary:

In truth, after I touched God and had an imperfect notion of His Being, I wanted to prostrate myself, my forehead and my heart, in the dust and never get up again.

During her life her writings were examined by the Catholic Church in Mexico and even during her pilgrimage to Rome in 1913 where she had an audience with Pope Pius X. In all cases, Church authorities looked favorably on her writings.

Her children report that they hardly ever saw her writing, but her religious writings and meditations total over 60,000 handwritten pages. The length of her religious writings thus approaches that of Saint Thomas Aquinas.

As a lay woman, she  aimed to show her readers how to love the Church. She wrote:

To love the Church is not to criticize her, not to destroy her, not to try to change her essential structures, not to reduce her to humanism, horizontalism and to the simple service of a human liberation. To love the Church is to cooperate with the work of Redemption by the Cross and in this way obtain the grace of the Holy Spirit come to renew the face of this poor earth, conducting it to its consummation in the design of the Father's immense love.

Her book  "I Am: Eucharistic Meditations on the Gospel", was the result of meditations during Eucharistic adoration. It aims to clarify the words with which Jesus defines Who He is in a variety of statements beginning with the words: "I am".    

In "Seasons of the Soul" she viewed the maturation of spiritual life as an ongoing process through the various seasons until the soul has fulfilled its purpose on earth. It discusses how the Holy Spirit is at work gradually transforming the soul through its seasons in the image and likeness of Jesus.

"A Mother's Letters" reflects the fact that she was not a cloistered mystic but a busy mother with nine children and a widow during a turbulent time in Mexico's political history. The letters provide a glimpse of her warm, human side as she communicates with her family.

Venerable Conchita’s life is characterized by many facets.  She fulfilled all the vocations of a woman: wife, mother, widow, grandmother, and even, by a special indulgence of Pius X, without being deprived of her family status, died canonically as a religious in the arms of her children.


She addresses herself to all categories of the People of God, to lay and to married people, to priests and to bishops, to religious and to all consecrated lives. Her profound writings can be compared to  those of St. Catherine of Siena and St. Teresa of Avila.

Conchita died on March 3, 1937, at the age of 75 and is buried at the Church of San José del Altillo in Mexico City. She had lived a multi-faceted life, being a mother, a widow, a mystic and a writer. Of herself she wrote:

I carry within me three lives, all very strong: family life with its multiple sorrows of a thousand kinds, that is, the life of a mother; the life of the Works of the Cross with all its sorrows and weight, which at times crushes me until I have no strength left; and the life of the spirit or interior life, which is the heaviest of all, with its highs and lows, its tempests and struggles, its light and darkness. Blessed be God for everything!

Her canonization process was started in 1959 by the Archbishop of Mexico City, at which time about 200 volumes of her writings were submitted to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Pope John Paul II declared her venerable on December 20, 1999 and she is currently in the process of beatification.

EASTER WITNESS- FEAR NOT

Mary Magdalene -  Nikola Saric

All four Gospel accounts note the empty tomb was first discovered by women. This is significant in two ways. First of all it highlights the fear of the male disciples. Rather than visiting the tomb, they were gathered together in a locked home. Did they love the Lord any less than the women? Fear does strange things, paralyzing us when we should have faith in our love, moving us forward- even into the unknown! 

Also remember, in ancient times the testimony of a woman counted less than that of a man. If the story of the empty tomb had been fabricated by the women, men would have certainly been the first ones noted as uncovering the truth. Four men wrote the Gospels, basically telling the same story, so why would they give us some far-fetched yarn, made up by women, if it was not the truth?

Jesus told them :I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. The women were the first to understand this!